


Abyssus Abyssum Invocat

by tcmbraider



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Games)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 14:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13929261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tcmbraider/pseuds/tcmbraider
Summary: But it was too late to turn back now. Much too late, in fact. And while Lara hadn't exactly planned to wade through muddy streams for hours on end, she felt it suited her current mindset quite well. A mixture of grey and green and specks of blue, and the all-overshadowing nuisance that was her right ankle. / Post-AOD.





	1. Ex Oriente Lux

**Chapter 1: Ex Oriente Lux**

* * *

I am using these characters for a work of fiction and do not have any claim to their copyrighted character.

—

If the last couple of weeks had proven anything, it was that the world consisted of nothing but rain and mud.

Wherever Lara Croft turned, a curtain of thick raindrops greeted her; turning the world around her into a dull, grey mass that could very well be a mirror image of her own psyche after spending three weeks in the North Andaman rainforest. If it wasn't pouring, the moist heat threatened to suffocate her—and neither option ever gave her the opportunity to dry off. Hell, she couldn't even remember what dry clothes  _felt like_.

Grasping a low-hanging branch with her right hand, the archaeologist cursed colorfully and pulled herself up onto the colossal root of the very same tree. There was a fine line between ambition and idiocy, and quite frankly, she had crossed it the second she had set out to find this be-damned artifact. Not only had there been no actual proof of its existence except for a few measly documents, the sheer notion of finding a temple in the midst of a lush rainforest was also bordering on the ridiculous.  _To put it nicely_.

But it was too late to turn back now. Much too late, in fact. And while Lara hadn't exactly planned to wade through muddy streams for hours on end, she felt it suited her current mindset quite well. A mixture of grey and green and specks of blue, and the all-overshadowing nuisance that was her right ankle.

She couldn't fault Putai for doing her best to save the foot, of course. She had meant well and done a splendid job, both in healing her physical injuries and urging her to get off her arse the very second she had managed to stand without retching for the first time in months. However, that didn't take away from the fact that the bones in her ankle had been set poorly—or not at all, for that matter. And while Putai had went on and on about drawing strength from one's pain, about how useful it could be, Lara had passed the time thinking of ways to make her suffer so she could prove her words weren't as empty as they had felt.

As she continued to make her way through the underbrush, Lara subconsciously reached for the amulet around her neck. It had long since become a useless reminder of everything she had went through to get back on her feet; the cold pendant a dead weight around her neck, threatening to pull her down and under, and bury her beneath all the things she had turned her back on in order to do what was  _expected_  of her. Had it not been for Putai's voice in her head, she would have continued to ignore Werner's incessant begging—and looking back, perhaps she  _should have_. Karel hadn't been her bloody issue anyway.

Not back then, at least.

Dropping the pendant, Lara shook her head and pushed onward. No matter how often she told herself that he was gone for good, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had  _missed_  something. Karel hadn't survived for thousands of years and managed to fool the Lux Veritatis into thinking he was just another one of Eckhardt's followers because he got lucky—just like she couldn't believe that she had  _actually_ managed to defeat him with a flick of her wrist. It just didn't make any sense.

But then again, what did? The Chirugai she had picked up in the arena, the only proof she'd had that Kurtis had been more than a mere figment of her imagination, had disappeared before she had been released from prison—crossed out from the list of her belongings, stolen,  _repurposed_. Or, perhaps, returned to its owner.

It was the most plausible explanation, if the most infuriating one. If Kurtis  _existed_ —if he had survived whatever had caused him to leave his beloved Chirugai behind in the first place—why hadn't he bothered to contact her? Clearly, he must have known that she had been incarcerated or else he wouldn't have known where to search for his stupid disc. Then why had he not helped her, talked to her? She had  _trusted_  him, and he had repaid her with complete and utter indifference.

Or he  _had_  found her, and she simply couldn't remember. It was a possibility, considering the many days she had spent on the floor of her cell, paralyzed by whatever drug they had tested out on her that week; though if he had, she should be able to remember  _something_  other than the muffled laughter of the guards and the searing pain in her spine.

_Remember_.

The word burst through her mind like a red-hot flame, the sheer shock of it forcing her to double over. There was nothing pleasant about the female voice inside her head, nothing that she could have focused on to shield herself from the rush of pain that followed the initial burst. It wasn't the first time that someone had snuck into her mind in order to communicate with her, yet still, there was a difference between welcoming the conversation and having it forced upon you. Not to mention that Putai's voice had always reminded her of a gentle caress, a soft whisper—not a goddamn steamroller.

_Remember._

Wrapping her arms around her head, Lara sunk to her knees and inhaled; reminding herself to keep breathing despite the burning pain in her skull. Whoever was penetrating her brain with their powers must have eavesdropped on her thoughts before—not bothering to notify her of their presence until now. She must have forgotten to keep her walls up after she had returned to England; or, perhaps, whoever was dancing on her frontal lobe merely knew how to bypass mental barriers.

_Remember what?_  she finally screamed into the void, her entire body shaking with the effort of staying conscious. Yet instead of receiving a valid response, she merely felt the blinding pain crawl down her spine, lower and lower, boring into her kidneys until she couldn't help but curl in on herself.

_Where are you?_

Lara tried her best to suppress the disbelieving laughter that burned in her throat.  _India. The North Andaman Island. Hopefully close enough to you so I can rip your throat out._

The pain eased for a moment, and Lara instinctively braced herself for another wave—that never came.

_Open your eyes. Where are you?_

For a fleeting moment, she considered telling her just what she could do to herself, and to hell with the consequences. It was only when she realized that she couldn't hear the stream or the birds, or feel the rain on her skin, that she obliged; and yelped.

The rainforest had disappeared, making way for what looked like a Vedic burial chamber. Lit torches lined the damp, moldy walls to either side of her, flickering in a non-existent breeze and casting ghostly shadows onto the sarcophagus before her. Tiny streams of water passed by her feet, flowing into a seemingly bottomless pool that surrounded the platform the coffin was resting on on all sides.

Lara rose from her crouch, itching to reach out, to touch the cold stone and find out whether it was real or not—yet she remained still, her hands curled into fists on either side of her body.  _How did you do this?_

_What do you see?_

Of course. The cryptic, bodiless voice wasn't planning on making her life any easier.

Walking along the narrow path between the pool and the wall, Lara pulled the machete from the back of her belt and scowled, tempted not to reply at all.  _Inscriptions—thousands of them. Sanskrit, perhaps. Flowing water, but no source in sight; an altar to the back—filled with candles, herbs, parchment…_ She frowned, allowing her gaze to shift to the other end of the room and back again.  _No exit._

That could certainly be an issue.

_Why are you here? What are you looking for?_

It was all Lara could do not to give up on her carefully assembled restraints. She had come to the North Andaman to  _forget_  about her past; about Putai, the amulet, the Cabal… Not to be  _reminded_  of everything she had wished to leave behind. There had been no greater cause to her actions, no attempt to make sense of something she had failed to understand. In fact, she had not even expected to  _find_  anything.

_Remember Prague. Why are you here?_

Moving toward the sanctuary at the back of the chamber, Lara shook her head. All she remembered were the shackles around her wrists and ankles, the drugs, the infection she had almost succumbed to. Other than that, well—there  _had_  been a few seconds of clarity now and then, but even considering those fleeting moments, there had been nothing she would have considered abnormal or curious.

Except for,  _perhaps_ …

_Why are you here? What are you looking for?_

Someone had saved her. Shortly before she had been freed of all charges and sent back to England,  _someone_  had grasped her arms and talked to her—or tried to, for that matter. She could still remember his deep, melodic voice and the urgency with which he had spoken; his cold skin on hers, like water rushing through her veins, and the slight bulge beneath his black shirt. It had reminded her of something else, something important—though she hadn't quite managed to remember  _what._

Though frankly, she hadn't really  _cared_  either. At the time, all that had truly mattered to her had been her own sanity and survival; not a stranger's injuries or the bruises he had left on her arms. Even Karel had been nought but a distant memory, a possible threat she couldn't be bothered to evaluate further until it became  _necessary_.

A horrible mistake on her part, apparently.

_Why are you here?_

Letting her gaze wander across the room once more, Lara shook her head and pursed her lips. She hadn't listened to the stranger back then, and even if she had, she highly doubted that she would have cared enough to remember his words  _now_. Hell, she wasn't even sure if he had  _actually_  existed or if he had merely been a figment of her overactive imagination—…

_Of course_. The bulge beneath his shirt, covering a wound she had  _itched_  to taunt him about; the feeling of his powers rushing through her body to heal what he could in the little time he'd had; the command he had repeated over and over again, until she had snapped and slammed her shackles against his nose.  _His eyes_. Hot anger had turned them a dark shade of grey, like a cloudy winter sky, though he had refrained from giving her a taste of her own medicine; except for the added pressure on her arms and the nagging migraine, perhaps.

But what had he  _said_?

"I was told to come here," Lara whispered, furrowing her brows in an attempt to remember his exact words. He had mentioned the Andaman, Karel… France.  _Find it and come back to Paris._

_What are you looking for?_

He had not been able to retrieve it himself—not in his condition, at least. She had seen how much healing her had affected him, how it had deepened the lines on his forehead and robbed his skin of its slight olive tint. Assuming that he was everything  _but_  a hallucination and not as annoyingly immortal as Karel, the heat of the rainforest alone would have brought him to his knees; even more so considering the wound he was nursing. Hell, he had already bled through the thick bandage when he had first entered her cell, the dark blood glistening on the fabric of his shirt. And even though he had tried to ignore it, she had noticed his stiff movements and the odd posture.

Turning her focus back to the sarcophagus in the middle of the chamber, Lara tightened her grasp on the machete and risked a glance into the sheer bottomless pool before her. It wasn't particularly wide, though she couldn't tell if there were any nasty surprises lurking in its depth—and frankly, she didn't want to try her luck.  _Especially not_  if there was  _any_  chance Karel could have found out about Kurtis' survival and impersonated him once more to gain an advantage over the both of them.

Lara took a step backward and re-attached the machete to its holder before taking a closer look at the altar behind her. The herbs looked eerily fresh, which meant that someone had to keep honoring the gods in the deceased's name; though she couldn't say how they got in or out on a regular basis if there was no  _door_  of any kind. She really just hoped that Kurtis had planned ahead for that too.

Taking a hold of the wooden plate that held the herbs and parchment, Lara improved her stance and pulled. It didn't come loose immediately, forcing Lara to slam her knee against its underside to break off a piece; large enough to close the the gap between the platform in the middle of the room and the path she was currently standing on, but narrow enough to make it a task all on its own to cross.

_What are you looking for?_

She should have noticed the Latin inscriptions on the stone coffin long before anything else. Not only did they not fit in with the Sanskrit surrounding them, they had also been inlaid with a kind of silver paint that shimmered in the dim light—almost reminding her of the calm water surrounding the platform.

One hand grasping the hilt of the machete at her back, Lara approached the sarcophagus; her eyes jumping from the lavish designs encircling the Latin inscriptions to the water to either side of her feet. If there was one thing she had learned from experience, it was that one could  _never_  be too careful. Especially not when it came to reading inscriptions  _before_  releasing an evil Egyptian god from his tomb.

Lara only relaxed upon reaching the platform, though one of her hands always remained close to her belt— _just in case_.

What truly surprised her about the inscription wasn't the fact that it just  _didn't belong_  inside a Vedic temple, but the sheer condition of it. The paint inside the gaps looked as though someone had taken care of it all these years, touching it up whenever necessary—though considering the fact that most of what she could see around her was most likely just an elaborate illusion, she couldn't find it in her to feel  _too_ astounded by the craftsmanship.

" _Transit umbra, lux permanet_ ," Lara murmured, brushing her fingers against the cold stone. " _A shadow passes, but light remains_."

How fitting.

Stemming her entire body weight against the lid of the coffin, Lara pushed— stopping only inches before it would have toppled over.

_What are you looking for?_

Perhaps she had been wrong about Kurtis not wanting to retrieve the artifact because of his current condition; after all, the inside of the sarcophagus did not only hold the barely decomposed corpse of a Lux Veritatis warrior in full metal armor, the sword he was holding, t _he sword she had been told to retrieve_ , had also been engraved.

_Konstantin Heisssturm,_ _Veritas numquam perit_.


	2. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

**Chapter 2: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum**

 

Despite the horrors of the past few months, Paris hadn't changed. The streets were as deserted and uninviting as ever, dotted with overflowing garbage cans and torn posters on either side of the road––––and even the bitter aftertaste of death and destruction still clung to the buildings, looming high above Lara as she trudged past St. Aicard's Church and down toward the Place D'Arcade.

She'd briefly considered looking for Janice in the cluster of backstreets and reeking alleyways, but had finally decided on trusting her own instincts first; if only to avoid attracting any more attention than she already had when she'd first set foot in the ghetto. And, she admitted with a purse of her lips, because she didn't particularly feel like talking to anyone in that very moment. Not even someone who could prove to be somewhat useful to her.

Not to mention the fact that she still couldn't decide whether or not she was actually in the mood to face Kurtis after everything that had happened–––––everything that was  _bound_  to happen. They'd both broken their promise to each other in one regard or another, even going as far as negating the other's entire existence for the mere sake of some peace of mind.  _Hell_ , she was still trying to fool herself into believing that the Cabal had been defeated that night, that Karel  _couldn't_  have survived the explosion or found a way to retrieve the Sanglyph from the Sleeper's charred form, as she strolled down Rue Dominique half a year later, both hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her leather jacket.

It was the only option she was willing to consider possible for time being. Because, should he have fooled them, should he have managed to flee the Strahov complex with the Sanglyph and found another way to re-breed the Nephilim race, well… she was already very, very dead.

And no matter what the news agencies claimed, she did  _not_  have a lingering death wish. Not yet, anyway.

Slowing her pace to a comfortable swagger as she neared the Café Metro, Lara clenched her jaws and curled her hands into tight fists inside her pockets. No–––––she certainly didn't plan on dying anytime soon. But she wasn't willing to let Karel raise an army of Nephilim warriors for his own amusement either, even less considering the way he'd looked at her back in that arena, with that feral hunger clearly dancing inside his glacier-like eyes.  _Maniac. Sick, psychotic, piece-of-shit maniac._

She barely noticed the way Pierre shrunk back behind his counter upon catching sight of her in the doorway. She didn't care, either. Let him think she was there to wring his scrawny little neck for betraying her and making things decidedly harder for her in the long run, let him cower and wet his pants, as long as he didn't open his rutting mouth. There was only so much bullshit she could listen to on a daily basis, and she'd reached her absolute limit two years ago.

Collapsing onto the chair farthest away from the only customer in sight, Lara loosed a heavy breath and pressed the balls of her thumbs against her eyes. At least that cryptic, bodiless voice had vanished into thin air after she'd retrieved the Lux Veritatis blade –––– though the lingering headache it had caused had never fully dissipated.

"Perhaps you should try meditating, then." She'd felt the air shift beside her long before his voice had even reached her ears; had smelt his cologne the second he'd begun trailing her in the Metro tunnels. Yet still, there was something so utterly vexing about Kurtis that she couldn't quite suppress the groan resonating in the back of her throat as he took a seat across from her, that taunting smirk still etched into his rough, though undeniably handsome features.  _Bastard._  "Or cut back on the foul language, for a start."

" _Gladly."_ Shifting in her chair, Lara offered him her sweetest, most feral smile. "You'd have to leave first, though."

He didn't bristle; didn't even blink as he braced his weight on his elbows and leaned forward over the table. "Self-pity doesn't suit you, Croft. But if you'd prefer to try scaring Gunderson's men off with that pathetic glare of yours, by all means––––be my guest."

For a moment, it felt as though he had dumped a bucket of ice-cold water on her head. "Gunderson's still alive?"

How wonderful. Out of all the men Eckhardt had recruited for his cause, Marten Gunderson had been the only one with an agenda of his own; a general in his own right, she presumed, and Karel's second-in-command even before he'd betrayed his superior.

Well, that––––––and a raging pain in her ass.

"Eckhardt's men fled the Strahov well before you got to him."

Of course. Why keep your followers around when you can just butcher them later?

Loosing a heavy sigh, Lara shook her head and brushed a particularly stubborn strand of hair behind her ear. "So, in short: We don't stand a chance against the Cabal."

"Not without the Periapt Shards," Kurtis murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. "And not without the proper training and insight. It's a goddamn miracle I managed to get you out of that cell without activating their defenses once; and there's no way in hell they'll–––––"

"What are you talking about?" Sitting up a little straighter, Lara cocked her head to the right and clenched her fists beneath the table. "As far as I can recall, I was stuck in prison for months, and all  _you_  did was heal a few measly little wounds and spew some cryptic nonsense."

If her sharp tone of voice bothered him, he didn't show it. "You were drugged and brutalized when I found you, Lara, and I neither had the time nor patience to have some sort of deep conversation with a dazed know-it-all." He paused; whether to consider his words or assess her current mindset before going on, she couldn't tell. "I don't know which reality you're currently living in, but you only spent a week in prison before Karel's men started mushing your brain. Seemed like the old rat was positively dotty about you, to risk so much for someone his boss would've pulverized in a heartbeat if given the chance."

She wasn't sure whether it was his tone of voice or the cluster memories slowly beginning to resurface that made her stomach twist.

Oh, gods.  _Gods_.

If what he said was true––––then all those cold stares and growled commands hadn't been hallucinations after all. Which meant…

Oh, heaven. She needed air, and lots of it.

**–––xxx–––**

Kurtis could do nothing but stare as Lara leapt from her seat and rushed toward the door, her braid softly grazing the small of her back with each powerful, though stiff, step she took. He'd noticed how pale she'd gotten, yes, but there had been no fear in her eyes, no pain––––no nothing, aside from the hint of disgust that always seemed to linger in those wildfire eyes of hers.

But then again, she'd always had a way of blocking him out of her mind whenever she felt like it.

Grumbling a particularly vulgar curse, the legionnaire rose from his own chair and made to follow her; never once bothering to pay any heed to the self-important owner and the homeless man in the far corner of the room. Even if they had overheard their conversation, chances were they wouldn't be able to make the connection to the Cabal. And if they  _did_ , well… he'd take care of it.

Surprisingly enough, Kurtis didn't have any trouble finding her. She'd hardly made it to one of the reeking backstreets he'd come to loathe before stopping in her tracks and pressing the balls of her thumbs against her eyes, her elbows braced against the cold wall before her as if to keep herself upright. And, he mused, to hide the soft tremor in them.

"What did you remember?" There was no use in congeniality; not yet, at the very least. "Whatever it was, it might help us find them."

She remained silent for a little while longer––––regaining her bearings, perhaps, or shoving those memories back down before they could cause any more havoc. Only when she'd straightened and taken a couple of deep breaths did she face him again, the sparks of gold within her eyes like living, burning embers.

Heaven, he didn't want to know how many of her enemies she had paralyzed just by looking at them with those gods-damned eyes.

"Karel," she finally breathed, taking a tentative step toward him before catching herself and turning to head down Rue Dominique. "I remembered Karel."

Falling into step beside her, Kurtis stuffed his hands into the pockets of his olive-green army jacket and furrowed his brows. "Well, if you're going to bolt every time you see his face, you're in for an unpleasant surprise."

"Very funny."

"I wasn't joking." Whatever it was that bothered her, it had to be worse than Eckhardt's plans. By a long shot. "Until Karel's pushing daisies, we're a team–––whether you like it or not. And as such, keeping secrets from each other is generally a shitty idea."

Her icy glare didn't faze him; quite on the contrary, actually. "I thought I'd imagined most of what I'd seen and heard back there, but now––––now I'm not so sure anymore." She paused, shaking her head. "He was there. Every time I sobered up enough to remember who or where I was, he was there to taunt me."

The area around her nose paled again, though a quick glimpse at her hands told him she wasn't likely to run off again. As if she'd drawn strength from the memories, however disturbing they might have been, she merely straightened her spine and closed her eyes for the fraction of a second before loosing a tired, heavy sigh.

"I thought I'd imagined it," Lara repeated, her initial disgust suddenly turned into seething anger. "Him talking to me in the dead of night,  _touching me_ , reprimanding me. I don't remember what he said, exactly, but he never quite stopped talking."

Interesting. "He touched you?"

She grimaced, fingering the guns at her thighs as if they offered her some sort of solace. "Not physically, if that's what you're wondering. It felt as if he were peeling away my mind layer by layer, as if he was trying to find something I hadn't been willing to offer him, despite the drugs in my system." She paused, reevaluating her words. "But considering my overall condition at the time, there's no way to tell if I'd been hallucinating or not."

"Well, he must have had a reason to keep you alive all this time," Kurtis shrugged, fishing a half-squished package of cigarettes and a lighter from his pockets as he watched her. While unusual for someone with Karel's particular set of powers, he certainly wouldn't put it beyond him to try and pull the thoughts right out of her head––––especially if there was something important he thought she might keep hidden from him. Something worth butchering a good number of his own men for.

"I have come to accept that there is no understanding Karel." There was no sharpness in her voice any more, but no softness either. A perfect mask of complete and utter indifference, disturbed only by that wild, untamed look in her eyes as she clenched her fists at her sides. As if she'd fed on all the pain and suffering she'd recently endured, only allowing it to to make her stronger,  _harder_. "And even if there  _was_  a way to see right through him, I'm not sure it'd be worth the price."

While he chose to ignore it, he didn't miss that faint flicker of revulsion on her face as she looked at him; wondering how powerful  _he_  was, how willing to abuse his own gifts, perhaps, or simply trying to erase those horrid memories from her mind. He couldn't fault her for it, either way.

"That's nothing you should be too concerned about." His gaze shifting toward the mostly empty street before them, Kurtis shook his head and sighed. "As long as you stay alert and don't run straight into his arms, he shouldn't be able to manipulate you or your thoughts. If that's what he's planning on doing."

She bristled beside him. "He's planning on taking over the world and filling it with Nephilim warriors–––––and he'll do anything to achieve that. I'm not going to analyze that part any further than I absolutely have to, even less considering how bad our odds are at this point in time."

Well, she wasn't wrong, loathe as he was to admit it. With Gunderson's men swarming around Paris and Prague like hornets, they'd hardly be able to take a single breath without Karel knowing.

"We'll need a game plan, yes," he finally said, pushing his doubts into the farthest corner of his mind for the time being before offering her a lopsided grin. "And a sword."

"Wondered when you'd get to that." He could've sworn that was a flicker of a smile on her face, lighting up her features in the most impish way before vanishing again. "You know, perhaps you should tell me what you need it for, exactly, before I hand it to you."

"You're going to withhold my family heirloom from me?"

Her laugh was a thing of beauty, however wicked of a sound it might have been. "It was  _buried_  alongside your father. So either you managed to ruffle his feathers enough to make him go to such drastic measures just to keep it from you, or he felt it didn't belong in your hands in the first place."

"Something along those lines," he grumbled, slowing his pace to match hers as they left Rue de Piolet and headed toward the arguably more pleasant part of town. "Although it's hardly something I'd like to discuss with a silver-tongued devil."

Despite the amusement tugging at the corners of her lips, she didn't budge; her shoulders squared and her chin lifted in what he could only describe as posh arrogance as she strode toward the city center. A warrior in her own right, with eyes like molten copper and a mouth so vile it would have made her ancestors squirm in their graves. A woman so proud of being who she was he couldn't help but envy her for it.

And the only person who'd ever survived a Nephilim's mental assault.

"If we are to be partners," she said upon turning a corner and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, "then there's no room for secrets between us. I didn't ask for your biography either, all I want to know is what you need such a… specific weapon for."

Well, he couldn't exactly  _undermine_  that argument.

"It's been crafted from the same material as the Chirugai." As if for emphasis, he tapped his forefinger against the disc dangling from his belt. "Which makes it near indestructible and hard to lose–––though less handy in times of need."

Lara scowled at the wink he offered her, though she didn't bother voicing her annoyance. "So, to summarize: you sent me to India to retrieve a blade that is basically useless to either of us?"

"No." Averting his gaze from her face, Kurtis pursed his lips and twisted the still unlit cigarette between his fingers. "It could buy us some time until we can get our hands on the periapt shards. Slow Karel down, or skewer Gunderson––––send his army of writhing idiots into a panic."

He couldn't tell if that was empathy or mere indifference lingering on her face. "Oh, so you just wanted to poke the bad guys with a stick, then."

"We can share the experience, you know." Unless there was a way to get their hands on the shards first, without having to sacrifice the only thing his father had left him.

Lara only sighed, covering her face with her hands for the fraction of a second before crossing her arms and pivoting to face him properly for once. "This is not a game, Kurtis; and there's nothing funny about it either. If we find that we might need the sword to fend off Karel's men, then by all means, I'll find a way to get it to you in time–––––but as long as you can't think of a reason for why we should carry a gods-damned longsword around with us, it'll stay where it is. I can't afford being slowed down, and from what I've seen, neither can you." Not an insult, but an objective fact. "We don't even know what they're planning to do, or what they needed me for in the first place –––– why they didn't chase after me once I'd gotten out."

He didn't argue; only narrowed his eyes at the sharp set of her mouth as he finally turned to light his cigarette. "I take it you already have some sort of plan in mind, then?"

She didn't reply––––though he'd argue that the predator's smile slowly spreading across her lips would have been answer enough, in any case.

Heaven. Karel was in for one unpleasant surprise.


	3. aut neca aut necare

Marten Gunderson had never much appreciated the dusky gloom of the Strahov — had never been able to shake the feeling that someone,  _something_  was watching his every step, every breath, like a black widow waiting for the right moment to pounce — but  _this_ … this was, undoubtedly, worse. For about a dozen different reasons.

The walls felt too high, too  _alive_ , as he strode down one of the few heated corridors in the entire complex, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his thick, gray overcoat as though the gesture alone would be enough to frighten the less experienced, less scornful mercenaries wandering about, to keep them from approaching or even greeting him. Not that the Cabal had much of those, in any case; and even if they did, he highly doubted their high spirits would survive the first few hours of service — if the men  _themselves_  even survived them. Hell, he'd beaten the youthful glee right out of his own soldiers when Eckhardt had first appointed him his third in command; had shredded right through their minds and broken their spirits like dry sprigs in the summer heat.

Yet, perhaps, it had been a mercy. A blessing, even, to destroy them so thoroughly that they barely seemed to notice how inhumane they had become, how odd the food tasted, how stiff their muscles were. How little of  _them_  had remained.

And though he would never admit it, during some of the longer, colder nights, Gunderson found himself envying them for the darkness in their chests and the vast emptiness in their eyes.

Passing a cluster of what he could only assume were particularly unlucky maids, Marten ground his teeth and rolled his shoulders; his chest heaving and falling with deep, forced breaths as he quickened his step. He didn't look forward to this meeting, not in the slightest. Ever since the girl had escaped, ever since she'd pushed Karel out of her mind and countered his mental attack with one of her own, his boss had been beside himself with anger — lashing out at anyone and  _anything_  unlucky enough to be within his vicinity: The desk, the vials he'd carefully placed onto a special altar of sorts, his own men, his playthings. No one,  _nothing_ , had been able to escape his wrath.

He had grown near obsessed with Croft in the weeks following her escape, sending out mercenaries and henchmen alike to track her every step and demanding updates every couple of hours, though never bothering to have them bring her in. Not that they, or anyone,  _could_.

Hell — if she'd been able to disarm a dozen well-trained men and lash out at  _Karel_  while being under the influence of various drugs, he didn't want to know what she could do when left to her own devices.

Suppressing the urge to grimace at the thought, Gunderson shook his head and pushed onward, down and down and  _down_ , until the rising cold began to tickle his face and creep beneath his clothing, almost as though it were a sentient being rather than yet another annoying inconvenience. A hellhole, that was all this place truly was. A gods-damned, reeking hellhole of a building, with no windows or signs of human decency to speak of.

Croft had brought life into this place — so much glittering, burning light, that his boss had hardly managed to breathe the same air she had without gnashing his teeth and demanding she be bloodied up a bit more,  _tortured_  a bit longer. And he'd obeyed, begrudgingly or no. He'd  _obeyed_ , and paid a high price for it.

The truth of the matter was, Gunderson didn't know if she was truly aware of what she could do; or, if she did, how to use it to her advantage. She'd never been as raw, as  _savagely_ fierce as she had been when he'd broken her nose or temporarily blinded her, had never done  _anything_  without carefully thinking it through beforehand. Gods, even when they had captured that rutting Lux Veritatis warrior, the one person she'd seemed  _somewhat_  drawn to, she'd hesitated before opting to safe him. But that was then, and heaven only knew what else Karel had tried to do to her while his back was turned.

Gunderson didn't look down as he pulled his scarred hand out of his pocket and reached for the doorknob at the end of the corridor. He didn't have to, either. She had burned him thoroughly enough to cause lasting damage — the kind that never stopped hurting, no matter how much he tried to ignore it, and the kind that was so well-deserved he could barely fault her for it; especially considering the fact that  _he_  had been the one to offer her the rutting torch in the first place.

Which did not mean that he  _wouldn't_  rip out her throat and feed it to his dogs if given the opportunity.

Pushing the heavy, steel-forged door open, Gunderson squared his shoulders and shoved the thought back down, into the deepest, darkest corner of his mind. Lara Croft was none of his personal business, not any longer, and even though he wouldn't mind seeing her broken and defenseless once more, he had more important issues to deal with.

"Gunderson." Karel's voice sounded near-foreign against the cold stone surrounding them, his tone low and vicious, though hardly sharp enough to be a cause for actual concern. "You're late."

"We've had another  _incident_  near the vault," he replied matter-of-factly, his eyes never leaving his boss's hunched form. He'd turned his back on him, his hands braced against the makeshift altar he'd shoved against the far wall of his office; thinking, perhaps, or trying to make sense of something he hadn't bothered to share with his second-in-command. "Nothing major, but surprisingly time-consuming. My apologies."

The Nephilim raised his hand once — whether to silence him or the voices in his head, he couldn't quite tell. "Make sure your soldiers understand what they're sacrificing by… causing so much havoc." A pause. "There've been too many casualties already. I need them to stop  _thinking_."

Gunderson bristled, but gave a tentative nod. He'd been forced to neutralize too many of his own men during the past few months, so much was certain; and if their ideas had already taken root among the rest of them…

"Of course." Bowing his head once, he gnashed his teeth and set his jaw. No more casualties, no more rogue mercenaries. He could handle that. "About the —  _target._ "

Karel didn't move, though the mercenary could have sworn a muscle just below his left eye began to twitch. "Report."

"She's in France —  _Paris_." He hesitated, his shoulders sagging slightly as he loosed a breath. "My men mentioned seeing someone of Trent's built with her, but haven't confirmed his identity yet."

Not a lie, but not the entire truth either. They had not been able to identify him based on the photos Gunderson had sent them, claiming his nose or hair or mouth looked slightly different, but  _had_  agreed that he'd carried various, ancient-looking weapons on his belt. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't imagine Croft meeting anyone  _but_  Trent, especially not if she went to the filthiest part of town to do so.

"Did she bring the blade?"

He straightened when Karel turned, expecting the mental onslaught, the agony — but neither came. "No."

"Clever girl," he scoffed and dropped into the chair behind his desk, completely ignoring the scratches and dents he'd left in it as he brushed a stack of papers aside. "What else?"

"She doesn't seem to remember much; and keeps her distance from the Lux Veritatis."

A slow, tentative nod; then: "Keep trailing her. If she becomes a direct threat — you know the drill."

~x~

"I most certainly  _will not_."

Seated in the middle of her hotel room, Lara Croft shook her head and leaned back in her chair; her eyes aflame with anger and thinly veiled amusement as she took in the scenery before her. It had taken Kurtis five minutes to turn the room into a bloody mess, covering every available surface in books and maps and whatever else he'd deemed important enough to go over, without ever bothering to check if she was still following along. Although she wouldn't be surprised if he simply  _didn't care_.

"That wasn't a question." He didn't even take the time to look up from the cluster of documents he was so gods-damned focused on; his nose crinkled and his brows furrowed as he tossed a good number of them aside. "We can't rely on any of the information we've gotten so far."

She heaved a sigh, but stayed where she was — her legs draped over the arm of her chair as she watched him with feigned interest, two steaming plates resting on her knees. "While that may be true, we can't assume that Karel kept the same company Eckhardt did. Capture and question the wrong man, and your entire … plan could go south in a heartbeat."

He pursed his lips, but didn't argue. Perhaps he'd finally realized that she hadn't been manipulated in any way, that she  _hadn't_ reconsidered her loyalties, no matter how long the Cabal had held her captive; which was, admittedly, a feat in itself, even if she didn't feel comfortable admitting it.

"Pierre's guest," she went on after another minute or two, her chin raised and her shoulders squared as she offered him one of the two plates, "he was one of Gunderson's men?"

Kurtis nodded, though his face remained impassive as he dumped the rest of the papers and reached for the plate. "It's a possibility. That's why I asked you to be yourself, rather than smiling through your teeth."

She didn't bother pointing out that she  _had_ , in fact, been glad to see him again — alive and in one piece, wearing the same cocky smile she'd come to loathe; the one that now seemed to blossom on his lips, like a flicker of humor hiding among the stern arrogance.  _Didn't realize you liked me that much._

"I don't." Rolling her eyes at the faint, smug glimmer in his eyes, Lara shook her head and focused on her dinner instead. "And I don't appreciate you poking around my thoughts either, Trent."

"Perhaps you shouldn't  _shout_ them at me, then," he shot, his tone light and cheery enough for her to wish he choked on his gods-damned broccoli already. "And swearing at me won't help you, either. You'll have to learn to push me out of your head — and how to shield yourself, so no one else will attempt to attack you." He seemed to hesitate then, twisting his fork between his fingers as he glanced at her. "If you managed to counter Karel's powers, blocking  _me_  out shouldn't be an issue for you."

There was something in the way he spoke, the way he watched her, that made her bristle; though she still managed to offer him a half-hearted laugh and a soft sneer. "Who knows, perhaps I'm just toying with you. Feeding you false information in case you're not who you said you were."

To his credit, Kurtis didn't bother reprimanding her for her ill humor — though his lopsided smirk and slight tilt of the head told her enough about his train of thought to know he wasn't likely to drop the topic anytime soon.  _Smug bastard._

"You said you couldn't remember much of what happened in Prague." Ignoring the insults she continued to toss at him, he lowered himself onto the nearby couch and rested his plate beside him; hesitating, almost, before pushing it aside. "Was that part of your act, or just a statement of fact?"

There was no use in lying to him; not now, nor ever. "A statement of fact. All I remember is being in pain, and then … Karel, talking to me, to someone else. He never approached me as far as I can recall, but he hardly ever stopped talking to me." She paused then, lifting her shoulders in a soft, almost indifferent shrug before turning to face him. "There were other people, too — Gunderson, perhaps, but I couldn't be sure."

Even though he tried his best to hide it, she saw the flicker of pity in his eyes; that rutting, gods-damned sympathy that she neither needed nor wanted, no matter what Karel had done to her. She'd survived, after all. She'd survived, and she'd drawn as much strength as she possibly could from what had happened, taking every ounce, every bit of pain, and turning it into wrath and fire, smoke and cinders. A promise of violence.

"We could attempt to question one of his men, then," Kurtis said, his tone much harsher, much colder now, as he surveyed the fresh scars peeking out of her neckline. "Force him to talk, to tell us what they did — how they did it."

She shrugged, the corner of her mouth quirking upward as she assessed him.  _Didn't realize you liked me that much_.

The laugh that burst out of him in turn was so raw, so bizarrely  _free_  that she couldn't help but gawk at him; her head tilted to the side as she watched him lean back and pinch the bridge of his nose with two fingers, as if he were in utter disbelief over her words.

"Touché, Croft." He grinned then, a sight so viciously fierce she could have sworn she felt her own lips stretch in response. "Seems like I've underestimated you."

He didn't mention that he had still meant every word he'd said, every  _promise_  he'd made. Not that he truly had to.

Her grin only widening as she dipped her chin and loosed a soft chuckle, Lara shook her head; watching him for a second or two before shrugging. "We can't just  _take_  one of them and  _ask_  him to break his oath," she stated, her chest falling with a heavy, exhausted sigh as she leaned back. "And besides, Gunderson would know. We can't afford that right now."

No, they couldn't make any more mistakes — especially not when they were out in public. She'd already made enough of those when she had returned from the Andaman rainforest; when she'd called anyone who might've known Kurtis, anyone who might have seen him or heard from him. Anyone who could have told her where to find him, no matter if they were trustworthy or no.

But then again, she'd caused enough havoc to draw him right back to her, which had, in turn, made her life much easier. For the time being, at least.

"Gunderson has too much on his hands to worry about lone soldiers." Kurtis rubbed his eyes as he spoke, all signs of humor drained from his face. "He might reprimand the rest of them if one of their own goes missing, but unless they, themselves,  _talked_ …"

Lara knew what he was trying to say — knew that they could only avoid so much bloodshed in a war as brutal as this one — but couldn't find a part of her that disagreed, a part that fought against the notion of ripping out Gunderson's men's hearts one by one. "Unless you manage to convince them to wear matching bows, I don't think that your plan will work. If one of them saw us kidnapping his…  _colleague_ , Karel would still find out about it. And retaliate."

Of course, she was only guessing at this point. And quite frankly, she was beyond sick of it — the contradictory statements, the lack of proof, the looming threat at the horizon…

"We need to start over." Resting her plate on the only table that had escaped Kurtis's never-ending lectures, Lara shook her head and braced her hands on her hips. "What do we  _really_  know?"

He shrugged, watching her as she skimmed a few of the documents he'd scattered around. "Karel hasn't given up on his plans yet, and is most likely looking for another Sleeper." A pause, then: "He's more powerful than we anticipated, but hasn't been able to manipulate you — why not, I don't know."

"Gunderson's still working for him," she added, frowning at a particularly puzzling sketch before pursing her lips and sighing. "The Cabal. We have no idea who else is affiliated with them, or what their goals are. If there are others like Boaz."

If there had ever been a sight she hadn't been able to forget, it must have been the creature Kurtis had fought; the beast that had been half-woman half-demon, the  _thing_  that had smelled like a sewer drain and screeched like a hawk. A man-made monster — and one of many, if the creatures she'd stumbled upon in the Biodome had been any proof.

"I could take another look at my father's notes," Kurtis offered after a moment, his eyes bright and clear as they met hers. "Find out who he trailed back then, who to look out for… if there truly is another Sleeper."

She nodded, though her brows remained tightly knitted. "A new approach, then. You take care of the Cabal, and anything else that might have something to do with Karel himself. I will fly back to England tomorrow, gather as much information as I can on the Paintings and the Sanglyph, and make sure Zip will do whatever he's capable of to find their new hideout."

"What about your own safety, then? You're just going to cross your fingers and hope he won't attempt to break your skull open again?"

Exactly what she had planned to do, but — he didn't have to know that. Not when her well-being was neither important nor utterly relevant to their cause, not when all she cared about was destroying the Sleeper. And, of course, Karel.

"You'll know where to find me," she muttered eventually, handing him the piece of paper she'd studied before. "Should we have some time to spare, then by all means, tell me how to…  _shield_  myself from people like you and Karel. But as of right now, we have more important matters to attend to."

If he had planned on contradicting her, challenging her, he didn't voice his intent — and as she turned to leave, he didn't bother stopping her.


	4. Ab Aeterno

**Chapter 4: Ab Aeterno**

 

Standing in the midst of what had once been a rather pleasant-looking dining room, Lara Croft folded her arms across her chest and frowned. Everywhere she looked, there were bits and pieces of odd-sized metal strewn about, covering the floor, the furniture, the glass tables Zip had arranged his countless monitors on… even the gods-damned  _windowsills_  hadn't escaped whatever wild idea had sprung into his deranged head, regardless of the many empty shelves lining the far side of the room. There was hardly enough space left to stand among the clutter, let alone  _walk_ ; and though she would usually make a point of disregarding his eccentrics entirely, she couldn't help but bristle at the sight before her.

A sea of shimmering, gleaming metal, and a madman cowering before it.  _Wonderful_.

"Is there any greater meaning behind this, or did you just feel like staring at a bunch of scraps for hours on end?" Her voice was colder than she'd intended it to be, though she didn't bother reprimanding herself for it. Odds were he wouldn't even notice, and if he did— well, she couldn't exactly bring herself to care. "Karel's still out there, and  _he_  certainly won't stop to play with garbage."

His eyes darted toward her for an instant, the annoyance in them barely concealed. "What? You think I'm wasting your  _precious_  time?"

"I do, yes," she replied, lifting her chin just the slightest bit before gesturing toward the mess spread out in front of him. "Very much so, in fact — or does  _any_  of this have to do with the Cabal?"

The sidelong look Zip offered her in turn was nothing short of mocking. "All of it," he proclaimed, scrambling to his feet and reaching for one of the folders she'd given him days before; the mad delight in his eyes only seeming to swell with every single breath he took. "See, you mentioned this…  _thing_ , right? That, uh, So–… Cyp…"

"Sanglyph."

"Yes,  _that_." He paused momentarily, almost as though he were reconsidering his findings, before breaking out into a bright, near psychotic grin. "Well, I took a look at your notebook, okay? And… that thing, what it did— that was totally weird, right?"

It was an effort to keep her arms folded across her chest — to keep her fists tucked close to her body and her expression blank. "Could you be any more specific?"

"The glowing? The explosion? Anyway, see, I thought it was weird. And that sword you brought back from India, it's been just as much of a pain in the ass these last few days, so… I checked it out."

Taking a deep, steadying breath to try and suppress the anger already simmering in her gut, Lara raised her chin and shrugged her shoulders; motioning for him to go on rather than chastising him for wasting even more time on mere trifles. He'd hardly ever disappointed her, after all – at least not enough to fully justify her lingering mistrust, regardless of how little she cared for his odd mannerisms or the mess he evidently loved being surrounded by.

"As it turns out, the thing's made of a whole bunch of materials," he muttered, turning to point toward the first two rows of scraps as he spoke. "Copper, gold, steel, flecks of obsidian… and two other metals I couldn't figure out. Probably something…  _out of this world_."

"The Nephili were part  _angelic_ , not aliens, Zip. Save the conspiracy theories for a more appropriate time."

Despite her cool tone, a hesitant smile tugged at her lips. So he'd found  _something_  — something they might find use for in the future, minor as it might have been. Not that they could truly disregard any kind of new information at this point, anyway.

Shifting in her stance, Lara loosed a soft breath and sucked on her teeth; hesitating, almost, as she let her gaze drift from her friend to the pile of metal scraps to his feet. She didn't want to know where he'd acquired them or how he'd managed to get into the cellar without alerting her to his presence — not for about a dozen different, equally unpleasant reasons. And, loath as she was to admit it, to save herself from a major migraine.

"So — it's a  _fancy_  sword." Brows furrowed and her eyes gleaming with the first hints of exhaustion, Lara shook her head. "How is this going to help us, exactly?"

He smiled then; a wicked, vengeance-driven sort of smile she'd only ever seen him wear once before, back when she'd first told him about what she'd been dragged into during her stay in Paris. Back when she'd still struggled to breathe, to see, to  _live_ , knowing she'd been nothing more than a self-important pawn in a game she had never really intended to play, a game she'd been tossed into against her own will. A game that, despite her pride, she wasn't likely to win.

Zip's expression turned solemn in a heartbeat; whether because of something he'd seen in her face or her question, she couldn't quite tell. "Not at all, for now," he murmured, only to pluck a particularly deformed piece of metal from one of the small heaps on the floor. "I'm still trying to figure out what the other two components are, and if they play some part in… whatever it is they ought to do."

"Kurtis might be able to help you with that," Lara agreed. "It's his heirloom, after all."

One he wasn't at all comfortable with discussing, no matter how much she prodded him for answers; almost as if the sheer mention of it was too much weight to bear, a memory too  _upsetting_  to recall. She hadn't pushed the issue either, figuring that a gods-damned sword, regardless of its make, would hardly be enough to push Karel back — especially if he'd managed to return to the arena and retrieve the Sanglyph after the initial explosion.

Which, at this point, was less of a question and more of a certainty, considering the way he'd gloated as he'd hovered above her in that cell; his face gaunt and raw, blistered, even, as though his flesh had been torn right off his cheeks to reveal the blackened bone beneath.  _I decide. Whether you live or die, I decide._

The memory of his voice in her ear was enough to make the bile rise in her stomach, thick and bitter like the tonic he'd forced down her throat that same night.  _And if you're truly as smart as you consider yourself to be, you'll choose the right side. My side. My queen._

"…–Lara?" Zip's voice broke through her memories like a tidal wave, leaving her confused and slightly disoriented as she pulled herself out of the fog that had clogged her mind.  _Fine_  — she was fine, unharmed, and absolutely, completely safe. For now, at least. "Are you alright?"

She forced another deep breath into her lungs before she spoke, the words like gravel against her sore throat. "I'm tired, Zip. What did you say?"

"… _right_ ," he huffed, pursing his lips in thinly veiled skepticism as his eyes roamed across her face, searching for answers where even she had none. "I said that he'd be an idiot to tell us anything about that thing. It's clearly important to him, otherwise he wouldn't have sent you to find it — but he didn't tell you where it was, why his parents hid it in  _India_  of all places,… why his father looks like he  _just_  kicked the bucket."

A good point, though one she'd keep tucked into a corner of her mind for now. "Well, as of right now, we're holding his sword hostage. Either he answers my questions or he'll never get his hands on it again, heirloom or no." She paused then, unfolding her arms as she watched the small piece of metal shimmer in Zip's grasp. "Where did you find the obsidian?"

"The hilt, mostly."

Interesting. "So, we have a Lux Veritatis blade, hidden in a Vedic burial chamber, engraved in  _Latin_ , possibly addressed to the man I found in the tomb… and a hilt decorated with the same kind of obsidian the ancient Greeks used for weaponry during the  _Neolithic Age_ , as well as… what was it? Copper?"

"Yep," he nodded, gesturing toward the mess behind him. "Gold and emerald, too."

If that was true, the sword would not only be impossible to date, it would have also been worth a fortune — and, more importantly, wouldn't have been the kind of weapon one would carry into battle. Not unless slashing through flesh and bone hadn't been its primary purpose.

Heaving a disgruntled sigh, Lara shook her head and braced her hands against her hips. "What about the file I gave you?"

"Dead end," he mumbled, dropping into the chair behind his desk and nudging a few containers of what looked like Chinese takeout to the side. "Interpol blew up the Strahov shortly after Karel abducted you, and the only trace he left behind is… well,  _you_. And you ain't tellin' us nothin'."

There was something in the way he looked at her then, the way his eyes darted from her knitted brows to the fingers digging into her own waist, that almost made her bristle. It wasn't often that Zip bothered to worry about her, even less now that she was unharmed and fully capable of tearing him to bloody ribbons for it — but whenever he did, whenever he looked at her the way he did now… it tugged something loose deep inside of her chest, something so vile and piercing, she'd much rather keep it locked up.

Pointedly ignoring his gaze, Lara gave Zip a sharp nod. "Try other databases. He'll be somewhere in Europe; probably the Ukraine or Greece." A pause. "He wants me to find him, so he won't keep a low profile either."

"What do you you mean he wants—…why do  _you_  even want to find  _him_?" The disapproval and blatant disbelief in his voice wasn't lost on her, though she kindly ignored it. "To have him mush your brain a bit more? And even  _if—_ … why would you walk right into his trap? Last time he got his hands on your miserable ass, you spent two months confined to a hospital bed!"

"I'm well aware of that," she snapped, waiting for him to turn his attention back to his monitor before loosening her jaws and inclining her chin toward the mess he'd made. "But this — however helpful it might be, we need to know where the Cabal are  _first_. What they might be planning, who they are conferring with, whether they've found another Sleeper…"

A weak explanation for something she couldn't possibly put into words — and yet the only one that made sense. Karel would never, not in a million lifetimes, allow her to return to the life she'd known before; not as long as he remained as infatuated with her as he had been in Prague, and most certainly not until he'd managed to break through whatever mental barriers she'd shut him out of her head with. He probably saw her as a challenge more than an opponent at this point, anyway.

Not that his perception of her —of  _them_ — mattered.

Bending to pick up a shard of emerald, Lara pursed her lips and huffed through her nose. "There's nothing to worry about, in any case," she murmured, turning the piece around in her hand. "He needs me alive, and unless he killed all of his men since we last met, I won't have any trouble identifying them."

"That's not the issue." His eyes flickered toward her for a moment, narrowing slightly at the gem between her fingers. "Do you have any reason to trust Kurtis? Even if he truly were who he says he is —which, by the way, he is  _not_ — the guy's a bloody maniac. Whether you live or die won't matter to him, not unless you take his stupid revenge with you."

"What do you mean?"

He hesitated for a moment, only to push his keyboard away and heave a rather theatrical sigh. "You already know  _Trent_  isn't his real name — but did you know he's a mercenary? And a foreign legion bastard, at that."

She hadn't known. And though she tried her best to make herself believe it didn't matter…

"I thought their servers were impenetrable." And rigged with thousands upon thousands of safety mechanisms, all destined to target whoever had the audacity, the  _hubris_  to attempt hacking them — although she'd never heard of anyone  _attempting_  it, either.

A soft smirk tugged on the edges of her friend's mouth as he huffed and leaned back in his chair, both arms crossed behind his head. "Nothin's impossible, girl. Or  _impenetrable_."

"You need a lawyer, then," she shot, her nails digging deeper into her skin. Yet another ridiculous waste of time that she would have to deal with; another favor she'd have to call in for something so trivial, so unimportant—… "Or a baker's dozen,  _considering_."

He merely shook his head. "Got this one covered. Either way, there was a lo—…"

"If there's anything I need to know, or feel he should tell me about, I will ask him myself." Shifting to pocket the gem she'd been clutching for the past few minutes, Lara gritted her teeth and straightened her back; her patience finally wavering as she braced her hands against the glass table and leaned forward. "Either way, I don't see the importance of his… past occupations, seeing as he's  _not a threat_."

The answering scowl on his face told her enough about what  _he_  thought that she couldn't entirely suppress the renewed anger and impatience blossoming in her eyes. If this was any indication of how he'd treat Kurtis once he'd arrive, she definitely wouldn't be able to protect him — or find herself willing to, for that matter.

"Maybe not to you — maybe not right now," Zip scoffed, carefully avoiding to meet her glower as he turned his attention back to whatever it was he'd been staring at before; a single muscle feathering in his jaw as though he, too, had to douse the adrenaline in his veins. "But judging by his file, he's the last person  _I'd_  ever trust."

Gods, if she had to listen to his mindless rambling for another minute… "Cut it out, Zip, or I'm going to have to remind you what  _my_  file looks like."

He didn't bother looking up again for a good minute, seemingly calming whatever kind of fire was burning in his gut before, finally, leaning back in his chair; both hands folded in his lap while his eyes remained glued to the screen in front of him. Pouting.

_For heaven's sake._

"There you go," he snapped eventually, inclining his chin toward the monitor. "These are all the hits I got — everything else, well, you'll have to check out yourself."

While she refrained from reminding him that, despite his own, deranged beliefs, she still signed his pay checks every month, Lara couldn't help but roll her eyes at the slight offense lingering in his voice. "Enlarge the one on the bottom right, please."

Though the image was foggy, there was no doubt about who was staring into the camera — or what he was holding in his hands. In fact, Karel really hadn't changed much from when she'd last seen him; his cheeks had barely even begun filling up yet, his nose had remained slightly crooked and his bones were still peeking out of the torn, burnt flesh here and there, almost as if his body were fighting against the healing process.

Or, she mused, he was simply trying to mess with her head again.

"Where was this taken?"

"Kiev." Zip's voice sounded raw now, laced with what she could only assume was restrained anger and, knowing him, hints of paranoia. "Outskirts of the city, near some old industrial area. I didn't even know they used these kind of security cameras there."

Nodding her agreement, Lara frowned and leaned back. "They don't, actually."

Or at least, that had been her impression when she'd last been there — not that she couldn't have  _overlooked_  them then, or simply considered them meaningless. It wasn't often that she found herself in any sort of urban area, in any event, and even when she did, well… her focus usually lay in something more important than hidden cameras.

Burying her hands in the pockets of her jeans, Lara gnawed on her bottom lip and knitted her brows. There was something horribly, utterly wrong with this picture; something minor, perhaps, a detail that didn't fit into the larger context. The way he held himself was certainly reminiscent of the man she'd come to loathe, and the wounds he wore, the way the torn flesh drooped down the side of his face like molten wax, couldn't have been staged — but there was something else too, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Something much more frightening than the smirk tugging on his lips.

"Judging by the timestamp on the videos, these were all… taken at the exact same time," Zip tried, turning the monitor —now plastered with a myriad of different images— to properly face her. "Bangkok, Paris, London,… No matter how much of a blockbuster-movie-villain that guy is, I have trouble believing he'd be able to pull  _that_  off."

There was a roaring in her ears now; a loud, rumbling noise that reminded her of the night Von Croy had been murdered — the night her life had fallen to pieces. "Turn it off," she said, her hands shivering as she stumbled backward and reflexively reached for the pendant around her neck, warm and soothing against her clammy skin. "Turn. it.  _off_."

Perhaps a part of her knew that it was too late. Perhaps she should have known before.

But even despite that, despite  _herself_ , she couldn't help but press the balls of her thumbs to her temples when the screen turned to black and the roaring increased, deafening her,  _blinding_  her, clawing at her brain.

Tugging her down, down,  _down_ …

And the voice — that voice she'd prayed she'd never hear again.

"Hello, Lara."


	5. Latrunculusque Matum

**Chapter 5: Latrunculusque Matum**

 

She wasn't sure if she was still breathing.

Within seconds, her body had grown taut; her left fist clenching and unclenching at her side as Lara stared at the monitors arranged before her, a mask of utter calm and indifference plastered over the first ripples of her terror. There was only so much havoc Karel could cause, she reminded herself, only  _so much_  he could do to her through a gods-damned computer screen — and even then, she could avert his attacks as easily as flipping a switch. Quiteliterally.

And yet, for all her stubborn reasoning, he was the first to break the looming silence. "Did you drop the warrior, or has he gone into hiding?"

"I drowned him in the bathtub," Lara lied, forcing herself to drop the pendant and brace both her hands against the glass table behind her. "He  _talked_  too much. Wasn't worth the trouble of keeping him around."

From the corner of her eye, she caught the distraught look on Zip's face; the grinding of his jaws as he stared at his  _toys_ , a tablet in hand, and beheld the uselessness of them. Unplugging the damned thing seemed to be the last thing on his mind.

She acknowledged the flicker of amusement on Karel's face a breath before he spoke again. "What a delightful lie," he commented, his voice like torn parchment in her ears — like the smoke that seeped into her own throat now, rich and suffocating and so horribly  _real_ … "And one I'd gladly believe, if it weren't for his nose buried in  _my_  business —  _our_  business."

A memory came to her, as sharp and unrelenting as the daggers in his gaze, but she chased it away. She didn't have time for this now.

"Ah." A cocky smile stretching across her lips, Lara raised her brows and cocked her head to the side, the movement entirely feline. "But I wouldn't want Gunderson to feel  _left out_."

He seemed to consider her words for a heartbeat — then shifted and mirrored her arrogance with the same careless ease that usually meant someone was about to go for her throat. It was an effort not to bristle in response, not to scan the room for intruders as Karel leaned forward and exhaled in a long, brittle breath…

…and raised his head less than a second later, presenting his mangled face to the camera — to  _her._

Even in the dim light, Lara could see the dead tissue barely clinging to his cheeks, the puss and blood mingling beneath ulcers and inside open wounds scattered around his nose and jaw — as if he were nothing more than a breathing, walking  _corpse._ A man decaying from the inside out.

It was enough to make her stomach rise.

"Gunderson has failed me one too many times," he breathed, his eyes bright and menacing beneath the drooping eyelids, the burned, oozing brow. "And he'll learn his lesson soon enough. You, however…" A pause; as if he were gathering strength, power. "You're a work in progress. And when the time comes, not even your beloved Lux Veritatis warrior will be able to rescue you."

The words resonated in her head, her heart.

But before she could reply, before she could even  _think_  to open her mouth in response, the screen went black, and the tightness in her chest eased. Eased, almost as though…

" _Lara_." She looked up — the movement alone leaving a raw, sharp taste in her mouth. But it wasn't the screen Zip was looking at, or the the pendant nestled between her breasts. No, he was focused on something else entirely, lower, and—…

Lara hardly registered his hands grasping her wrists and pulling them away from the table, a crust of burnt sugar covering her palms. No, not sugar — and those weren't stains on the table behind her, either.

She had burned clean through the glass panel.

...

 _There was a glimmer in the darkness — faint, shuddering, but_ there _, burning like a nightlight against the cool, sodden darkness surrounding her. A spark of hope, despite the roaring in her ears and the pain thundering inside her head. She watched it, skittering across the small ray of moonlight in her cell, ducking back into the shadows, dancing before her very eyes. Urging her to stay awake._

_She deigned to offer the thing a soft nod. Weak, pathetic, and entirely human; as though her bones were too brittle for her to risk moving too fast or using too much strength. And it understood. The damned little thing understood._

_As if sensing her discomfort, it shot back into the hallway — and returned moments later, shining brighter, as though it had feasted on the torches burning there. And for all her bewilderment, all her wonder, she found it watching her right back. Staring at her, at her chest, at…_

_Not at the amulet. At her heart, weakly slamming against her ribcage._

_Lara felt, more than saw, the glimmering speck of light land on her bloodied knees, one tendril of warmth, of…_ magic _stretched out, toward her. Prodding at something deeper, something… something she knew she_ had _, but never touched. But now — now that she was here, as close to Death as she had been a year ago, she couldn't give less shits about the ifs and buts. The plausibility of it._

 _So she raised her hand, her broken forefinger grazing the light on her knees, and sent a burst of power into the frilly little thing._ Breathed _light into it, light and fire and crackling embers, until it shot off through the barbed window; until she felt empty once more, and cold, and thoroughly useless. Until she found she didn't recall if she had been awake, or hallucinating._

_She didn't hear the footsteps approaching. She wouldn't have cared, either way._

" _Send Brianna down to clean her cell," a raw, male voice hissed just beyond her reach, even despite the worry and rage woven into his words. "And make sure she gets a new set of clothes."_

_He approached her with due care, as someone would approach a skittish deer. As though she had anywhere else to be. Anywhere else to die._

_But when he knelt beside her, head cocked to the side and his brows furrowed, she realized he didn't much give a damn about her emotional, or physical, state. No — that was fear, actual_ fear _, shimmering in Gunderson's eyes. And lots of it._

" _I brought food," he stated, and indeed, that was a bowl of stew in his hands. Rabbit, if she could still trust her senses. "And a message. One of my men will escort you to the showers tomorrow morning — and back down here in the afternoon. Plenty of time to… regain your bearings."_

_There was something different about his voice, something she couldn't pinpoint. But then again, Gunderson hadn't exactly given her a reason to properly listen to him._

_But there was no was no syringe in his hands tonight; no drugs, no ill intent. Nothing that would have made her recoil, or try to, at the sight of it._

_As if reading her thoughts, he mumbled, "You'll need your wits about you. Don't waste this chance."_

"…  _you're helping me." Not a question. But not a serious statement either, considering the soft, mocking laugh that tumbled from her lips. "What for? Did Winston offer to pay you for it?"_

" _No," he snapped, his face hardening at the sight of her ill humor. Or was it the smoke oozing out of her nostrils? It would most definitely be amusing if he could join in on her_ delusions _. "There are worse things than Nephili and Angels and Demons — and He's going to wake all of them. Breed them. And he'll use you— break you, destroy your soul, and with it… The world needs you, Lara Croft."_

_She didn't remember falling asleep that night — but in her dreams, in those dark, wrath-fueled dreams, it wasn't Gunderson's voice urging her onward._

_No, the voice she heard was much more familiar. Soothing. And for the first time in weeks, she clearly recalled reaching for it, running for it, until the other's cutting glare stopped her dead. Until she looked at her, sighed, and left her standing in the abyss._

_Putai._

...

"What  _the hell_  was that?" Zip barked, his hand trembling as he plucked another shard of glass from her burnt, mangled skin — and snarled at the blood welling up in its wake. "And what the hell did they do to  _you_  in there?"

She didn't reply. She wasn't entirely sure if she could.

There were too many variables, too many things to consider from here on out; and she was not only running out of time, but running out of resources. Even with the damage done to Karel's face, the decay that had set in, he didn't seem any weaker, any… more  _human_. If anything, he'd seemed stronger, harsher, and decidedly more  _feral_. A beast that had picked up her scent, had followed it anywhere she'd gone in the past few months, and was now lying in wait — until the day when it would pounce, and possibly swallow her whole. If his pets didn't tear her to bloody ribbons first.

Uncoiling to her feet before Zip could do so much as wrap a fresh gauze around her palm, Lara stamped off toward the main entrance hall — where she halted, almost hesitant, and turned back to face her friend. There was only so much she could tell him without breaking his trust; and for now, seeing Karel… seeing that decaying face, those tendons peeking through ruined skin, was enough. For both of them.

"Thank you," she murmured, if a bit half-heartedly. "I appreciate your… efforts." A pause — then, "Double…  _triple_  your firewalls and keep looking. Should anything out of the ordinary happen, unplug the damn thing and read a book."

At least  _that_  would eliminate the threat of Karel crawling through the screen, or leaving cryptic messages for Zip to decipher. Messages even she didn't entirely understand.

Shaking her head in an attempt to clear his voice from her mind, Lara dipped her chin and stalked off, heading toward the cozy library at the far end of the south-eastern corridor. Zip didn't call after her, didn't demand answers — maybe because he knew she had none to offer, or because he'd felt her own discomfort at the damage she'd done; the power she'd used, however unwillingly. And perhaps, just perhaps, he knew she didn't understand it either. And didn't  _wish_  to understand it.

It would still be a week, perhaps more, until Kurtis would risk meeting her again; a week during which she would have to come up with  _something_  worthwhile, something beyond flimsy fire tricks and memories she couldn't trust. Something, she thought, that would help them defeat Karel.

Or, at the very least, disable him for a while.

Locking the heavy double doors behind her, Lara pressed the balls of her thumbs against her temples and loosed a sigh. Too much. It was all too much, her thoughts too cluttered for her to focus. Nothing lined up, nothing made  _sense_ , and the harder she tried to remember, tried to push beyond the fog in her mind, the more her head hurt. As if her subconscious recoiled at the mere thought of reliving that specific nightmare.

She'd have to find another way, then. Another way to get past whatever wall she'd built to keep Karel  _out_ , and let herself  _in._  It was clear that her stay at his…  _hideout_  had either shook something loose, had unearthed something inside of her very soul, but — she had to know what it was, what that power consisted of, before she could even consider figuring out what  _he_  needed it for.

Or, she mused as she gazed across her messy desk, where the bloody thing had  _come_  from in the first place.

Lara forwent the desk for the phone she'd dropped beside it the night before, dialled, and waited. If there was anyone to contact about this, anyone who'd help clear her mind…

"Lara?" His voice alone worked wonders to soothe her racing heartbeat — the steady stream of thoughts flowing in. "I haven't found anything useful yet, but—…"

She didn't bother with pleasantries. "I just…  _melted_  glass paneling." A breath, then another, then— "And— Karel knows where we are, what we're trying to do. He's  _allowing_  us to close in on him. Whatever precautions you took,  _screw them_."

There was a sullen silence at the other end of the line; and for a heartbeat, Lara feared he wouldn't respond. "Glass — you melted  _glass_ ," he echoed eventually, his voice heavy with sleep and exhaustion. "That explains a lot."

"Such as? Your annoying platitudes? Or your undying need to be omniscient?" The words were sharper than she'd intended, but she refused to take them back regardless. He could handle it. "You won't find anything of importance in your father's notes; staying in France means wasting time we don't have."

No; this was a game without rules, and if Konstantin had died protecting the world from Karel, then the latter would most certainly have made sure he'd have an advantage if he ever managed to return — decaying or not. Werner… Werner had  _died_  because he'd gotten too close. And Bouchard, Luddick…

She chased the thoughts away as quickly as they came. If he considered the lives of millions a game, well — the rules had just changed. And she had no intentions of letting him get out of this alive.

"Are any of your father's friends still alive?" A dangerous question; tip-toeing the edge of their trust.

Kurtis remained silent a second longer, as if considering. "Two — or three, maybe," he murmured. "Four if we're lucky. The warriors all passed in the great war, but their wives…"

His mother. She hadn't thought to ask if— "Most of them went into hiding afterwards. Sold their belongings and moved to the most rural places, halfway across the globe. But many of them didn't even make it there."

"Most," Lara repeated, absent-mindedly wrapping her hand in what she hoped was her own discarded shirt. "And those three… women, you mentioned?"

He hesitated — an engine howling to life nearby. "They're still in hiding, but I do have their addresses. I have to warn you, though; they're hostile, and probably don't want anything to do with the Lux Veritatis  _or_  the Cabal — or strangers, for that matter. And I only trust one of them."

A lot of red tape, she thought. But better than being stranded with no answers, no assistance, and an immortal bastard breathing down their necks.

Kurtis loosed a sigh, then shut a door with a loud  _thump_. "I'll be there as soon as I can." And that was that.

She didn't bother wrapping her injured hand in a proper gauze, but kept the shirt pressed against the wound — careful not to smear blood all over the documents she'd brooded over the night before, however useless they'd turned out to be. There had to be something she'd missed — something that could explain the molten glass  _and_  the delusions she'd suffered. Something Karel  _knew_ , and she didn't.

Dropping into the armchair by the cold, unlit fireplace, Lara scowled. Before her imprisonment, before he'd tried to  _control_  her, she'd never come into close contact with magic like this — magic that should have exceeded both, her mental  _and_  physical capabilities. Kurtis had wielded some sort of power, yes, but… he'd never shown her just  _what_  he was capable of doing with it, besides threatening her life or decapitating mutants. He'd never had a proper reason to.

And she highly doubted that her own misery counted as a  _proper reason_. Even less so if Karel had somehow triggered this —  _caused this_.

What was it Putai had said?

_Demons will always find new ways to unsettle you. Their creativity knows no bounds._

And neither did her rage. Whatever horrors she'd lived through that her mind now rejected, whatever it was he'd done to Von Croy, she'd make him pay for it — in blood and gore. She'd make him  _suffer_  and  _beg_ , and enjoy every second of it.

Thumbing the pendant around her neck with her right, mostly uninjured hand, Lara shook her head and frowned; once at the fireplace, then at the warm weight between her fingertips. A blessing and a curse, that amulet. A lifeline and her own damnation. Taking it off was impossible — and, if Putai had told her the truth, cutting the worn leather strip from her neck would result in her immediate death, in one way or another. And for cowardice or mere indifference, she'd never bothered to try her luck.

But in the past few months, during the time she'd needed its lingering strength most… it had remained cold, lifeless, against her skin. Where the gold now seemed to  _glow_ , it had been unresponsive, like a dead weight on her chest; nothing more than a useless talisman, given to her by the best liar she'd ever met. The best  _friend_  she'd ever had.

Perhaps it reacted to her circumstances. Or the presence of something greater, wilder — someone like Kurtis, or Karel, or even Eckhardt. Someone who had been reborn, or remade, or gifted.

Although… she couldn't quite remember if it had ever felt this warm, this much like its own, sentient being, when Karel had been closest to her. When he had grasped her shoulders and come close enough for them to share breath, and when… no. No.  _There_.

...

 _He'd gotten closer this time; she could_ feel _his mental caress against the wall she'd built, brushing against the edges, testing for cracks. Against that towering wall of glittering adamant, that protective shell she'd formed around her brain._

 _Out— she had to get him_ outoutout _, before he could get any closer._

" _Gunderson," Karel barked, his voice near guttural as he tightened his grasp around her shackles and pulled, hardly bothering to notice her trembling body crushing against his own, knees buckling. Useless. Her body, her muscles… they were useless in here, weak and shivering and pathetic._

_How had she ended up here? "Prepare another 10 CCs."_

_Her mind recoiled at his words, but she couldn't remember why. He'd given her something… was_ planning _on giving her something, and she couldn't fight it, couldn't—…_

 _Yes, she could. She could — and she_ would _._

Why are you here, Lara Croft?  _I don't know._

_He tugged again, beckoning her closer to that needle, to his body._

You are not weak. You are More.  _I am I am I amIamIam…_

_There — a tendril of strength, and… he didn't guard his face. His heart._

Now. Go.

 _She let her feral side take over. Both hands braced against his face, Lara pushed, pushed,_ pushed _, until he stumbled back in pain or fear or disgust, or whatever else he was capable of feeling. Like an adder, quick and lethal, she lunged for him again — again and again and again, leaving his face in bloody ribbons and welts, as though she had not only_ cut _him deep, but burned him to the bone._

_Burned him, she realized, with her own two hands._

What are you looking for?

 _Among the blood and sweat and gore, Osiris' amulet —_ Putai _s amulet— shone like a dying star against the darkness. But that voice, that beautiful, ethereal voice… where did_ that _come from?_

Remember who you are. Remem—

 _You rutting_ bitch _—_

 _His curses flooded her mind like a tidal wave, like a warm caress against the coldness in her limbs, the heaviness of her bones, drowning out the Other, that strange presence in her mind. And she let them in — let_ him _past that threshold, just for once, just into an antechamber of her mind. A place where their bodies didn't exist, and where he could cause no havoc, no further damage._

_And through the fog in her brain, through the physical pain and mental onslaught, all she could do was offer him a grin. "Checkmate."_

...

His face — the shreds it had been left in, the welts and puss and blood seeping out of his wounds…  _she_  had caused it.

 _She_  had gotten past his defences, if only because that Presence had urged her onward, spurred her to lunge for him. And if she had done it  _once_ …

Lara bolted upright before she could remember to be careful with the makeshift gauze, the fresh wounds, but swallowed the yelp of pain threatening to rise in her throat. He'd stumbled backwards — he'd looked at her with  _fear_  in his eyes, the same fear she had seen on Gunderson's face that same night. He'd went as far as breaking her fingers one at a time for it, as far as beating her to a pulp, but… she'd still gotten past his shields. Had gotten past them, and dragged him out of his mind, and into her own.

And if there was one thing she knew, one thing she was irrevocably certain of, it was that she could do it again.

And when the time came, she'd make him suffer for it. For everything he had done.


End file.
